Page 76 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
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Slovenian Lectures
diately that saying: The more you go up P, the more you go up Q amounts to
the same thing as saying: The more you go down P, the more you go down Q.
If the more you go up the warmth-scale, the more you go up the pleasant-
ness scale, it must be the case that the more you go down the warmth-scale,
the more you go down the pleasantness scale. So that a same topos, which re-
lates warmth (P) and pleasantness (Q) in a scalar way, can have two forms,
which I symbolise as on the one hand, +P, +Q and on the other, -P, -Q. I
will say that those are the two topical forms, TF’ and TF’’, of the same topos
T. The same relationship between warmth and pleasant-ness can be consid-
ered under two forms but it is viewed positively in one case and negatively
in the other. I would like to say that the notion of topical form can explain
a certain number of things.
Here again, I am going to put myself at the rhetorical level, that is to say
the level of discourse, and I am going to try to show that the duality of top-
ical forms for a same topos can explain certain interesting rhetorical phe-
nomena, for example a discourse-strategy which I call refutation of an ar-
gument by the refutation of the converse [réciproque] argument. Let me ex-
plain what I mean by that immediately. Take an A, therefore C argument: I
call the not-A, therefore not-C, the converse argument of that first argument.
The converse argument of “It’s a beautiful day, the walk will be a nice one”
is the argument “It’s not a nice day, the walk will be an unpleasant one”.
The converse argument of an argument is therefore the argument which
moves from the negation of the argument to the negation of the conclu-
sion. For a logician, those two movements of thought A, therefore C and
not-A, therefore not-C are completely different, and it would be a very seri-
ous fallacy (well-nigh a mortal sin for a logician!) to confuse the two. Now,
a fact which I find very interesting is that in speech, it is extremely frequent
to confuse A, therefore C and not-A, therefore not-C. I am going to give an
example of that, even several. When a logician comes across such a phe-
nomenon, he says: “The reason behind those monstrosities is that people
have not studied logic enough, do not think enough, are mentally undisci-
plined”. In fact, I believe that confusion between an argument and the con-
verse argument has its roots in the conditions of discourse itself, and espe-
cially in the existence of two topical forms for a single topos. That is what I
am going to try to show. What does the strategy, which consists in refuting
an argument by refuting the converse argument, consist in? Someone says:
A, therefore C and to refute the argument, you say: Not-A, therefore not-C,
which is the converse of what he has just said. The strategy goes by unno-
ticed in everyday conversation. I am going to make up an example, perhaps
diately that saying: The more you go up P, the more you go up Q amounts to
the same thing as saying: The more you go down P, the more you go down Q.
If the more you go up the warmth-scale, the more you go up the pleasant-
ness scale, it must be the case that the more you go down the warmth-scale,
the more you go down the pleasantness scale. So that a same topos, which re-
lates warmth (P) and pleasantness (Q) in a scalar way, can have two forms,
which I symbolise as on the one hand, +P, +Q and on the other, -P, -Q. I
will say that those are the two topical forms, TF’ and TF’’, of the same topos
T. The same relationship between warmth and pleasant-ness can be consid-
ered under two forms but it is viewed positively in one case and negatively
in the other. I would like to say that the notion of topical form can explain
a certain number of things.
Here again, I am going to put myself at the rhetorical level, that is to say
the level of discourse, and I am going to try to show that the duality of top-
ical forms for a same topos can explain certain interesting rhetorical phe-
nomena, for example a discourse-strategy which I call refutation of an ar-
gument by the refutation of the converse [réciproque] argument. Let me ex-
plain what I mean by that immediately. Take an A, therefore C argument: I
call the not-A, therefore not-C, the converse argument of that first argument.
The converse argument of “It’s a beautiful day, the walk will be a nice one”
is the argument “It’s not a nice day, the walk will be an unpleasant one”.
The converse argument of an argument is therefore the argument which
moves from the negation of the argument to the negation of the conclu-
sion. For a logician, those two movements of thought A, therefore C and
not-A, therefore not-C are completely different, and it would be a very seri-
ous fallacy (well-nigh a mortal sin for a logician!) to confuse the two. Now,
a fact which I find very interesting is that in speech, it is extremely frequent
to confuse A, therefore C and not-A, therefore not-C. I am going to give an
example of that, even several. When a logician comes across such a phe-
nomenon, he says: “The reason behind those monstrosities is that people
have not studied logic enough, do not think enough, are mentally undisci-
plined”. In fact, I believe that confusion between an argument and the con-
verse argument has its roots in the conditions of discourse itself, and espe-
cially in the existence of two topical forms for a single topos. That is what I
am going to try to show. What does the strategy, which consists in refuting
an argument by refuting the converse argument, consist in? Someone says:
A, therefore C and to refute the argument, you say: Not-A, therefore not-C,
which is the converse of what he has just said. The strategy goes by unno-
ticed in everyday conversation. I am going to make up an example, perhaps
